Urban Legends And Ghost Stories
Albuquerque is a beautiful city with a haunting past – learn some of the local ghost stories and urban legends!
Sandia Ranch Sanitorium
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In the early 1900s, an insane asylum was built at the corner of Edith and Osuna streets. As was the case with most mental hospitals at the time, their medical practices were not strictly ethical, and the security was imperfect, to say the least. Dr. Samuel, for instance, supposedly performed a variety of inhumane experiments on the patients, resulting in 97 bodies being stored in the basement. Another story tells of a patient breaking loose from the guards and killing most of the people in the building – patients and staff alike. The hospital was eventually shut down, but people who were brave enough to explore the abandoned building reported being followed by a black cloud, or in one instance, being stabbed in the leg by a ghost. Just a few years ago, neighbors successfully had the building torn down, but it’s said that if you walk the land, the ghosts are still present and still angry.
La Llorona
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La Llorona is the ghost of a woman who roams up and down the banks of the Santa Fe River. Numerous generations ago, she was a woman married to an indifferent man. Their two sons were the sole reason he ever came home, preferring the company of his mistresses to that of his wife. His lack of interest wore on La Llorona, called Maria at the time, and one day, in a fit of frustration, she threw her two sons into the Santa Fe River. Her anger lasted only a minute, but it was long enough for her boys to be swept away and never seen again, likely drowned. La Llorona walked up and down the river constantly, not pausing for food or sleep, unable to find her sons and unwilling to stop searching. Even when she died from exhaustion and starvation, she did not stop searching. After dark, people still hear her weeping as she searches, and if a child approaches her spirit, they will be thrown in the river, as she hopes to exchange them for the return of her sons.
Urraca Mesa
It’s technically a couple hours outside of Albuquerque, but the legend surrounding the area transcends distance. The Navajo unwittingly settled the mesa, but it was quickly apparent something was wrong with the area. The chief sent off warriors to search the area, and when they returned, they brought with them a shaman, surrounded in a blue glow, who claimed to be the last of the Anasazi. He explained to the chief that his people had, centuries earlier, fought a long and hard battle with an army of evil spirits, and had, in a last ditch effort, the entire tribe had jumped through the portal to the underworld to fight back the darkness. He had been left, along with four cat statues, to guard the portal and ensure that it remained sealed. If the feline totems were all to go missing, the portal would reopen and the darkness would leak into the world, unchecked. Today, only two statues remain, and the surrounding area is known for unexplainable phenomena. Compasses don’t work at Urraca Mesa, and numerous visitors have been followed by unidentifiable creatures. A lucky few even catch sight of the Anasazi shaman, illuminated in blue, as he continues to guard the portal.